Omar Khadr To Receive Apology, Reported $10.5M Compensation From Canadian Government

He pleaded guilty to five war crimes before a much maligned military commission.

Omar Khadr leaves a news conference after being released on bail in Edmonton on May 7, 2015.

TORONTO — The Canadian government will pay former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr more than $10 million and apologize to him to settle a long-running lawsuit, sources familiar with an agreement that sparked an emotional backlash, said Tuesday.

The Toronto-born Khadr, 30, who pleaded guilty to five war crimes before a much maligned military commission in 2010 related to alleged offences that occurred in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 years old, had sued for $20 million for breach of his rights.

Part of the $10.5 million Khadr will get will go to his legal team, while the apology would be delivered by the justice and public safety ministers, one source said.

"There is a judicial process underway that has been underway for a number of years now," Trudeau said in Dublin, Ireland, on Tuesday. "We are anticipating, like I think a number of people are, that that judicial process is coming to its conclusion."

Amnesty International called the settlement, which another source said was signed last Wednesday, long overdue.

Clement: 'Most Canadians know this is absolutely wrong'

"For 15 years, Omar Khadr's case has been a stark reminder of the many ways that an overreaching and unchecked approach to national security readily runs roughshod over universally protected human rights," Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty in Canada, said in a statement. "In Afghanistan, at Guantanamo Bay and in Canadian prisons, Omar Khadr's rights were consistently violated and ignored."

Word of the deal also prompted fierce criticism.

Conservative party MP Tony Clement said "most Canadians know this is absolutely wrong" and urged Khadr to give any settlement money to the widow and children of the American soldier he was accused of killing in Afghanistan. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation started an online petition aimed at Trudeau, deploring the deal.

"This is offensive to many Canadians," the petition states. "Canadians should not be forced to pay millions of dollars to a killer."

However, the settlement money should not be seen as a windfall, a source said. Khadr is blind in one eye from injuries sustained when he was captured. His other eye remains damaged.

Omar Khadr To Receive Apology, Reported $10.5M Compensation From Canadian Government

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In Photos: Omar Khadr Freed

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Khadr's lawsuit — initially launched in 2004 — argues Ottawa violated international law by not protecting its citizen. He was later allowed to claim that Canada conspired with the U.S. in abusing him.

In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canadian intelligence officials had obtained evidence from Khadr under "oppressive circumstances," such as sleep deprivation, during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, and shared the evidence with U.S agents and prosecutors.

Khadr, who claimed the Americans tortured him, was long dubbed a child soldier by supporters. Instead, the previous Conservative government, under then-prime minister Stephen Harper, steadfastly branded him an unrepentant terrorist.

The Harper government "offered only inflammatory rhetoric in the media, in Parliament and in the courts," Neve said.

American troops captured a badly wounded Khadr after a fierce firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan. Khadr was accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American special forces soldier, U.S. army Sgt. Christopher Speer.

Widow won US$134M in damages against Khadr

After his release, he apologized to the families of the victims — as he had done at his guilty plea. He also said he rejected violent jihad and wanted a fresh start to finish his education. Lately, he has said wanted to work as a nurse.

Speer's widow and retired American sergeant Layne Morris, who was blinded by a grenade at the Afghan compound where Khadr was captured, won a default US$134.2 million in damages against Khadr in 2015, but Canadian experts called it highly unlikely the judgment could be enforced.

A long-standing attempt to get the military commission conviction against Khadr overturned in the United States remains stalled.

Earlier this year, the federal government apologized to three men to compensate them for the role Canadian officials played in their torture in Syria and Egypt. The apology to Khadr would follow similar lines, the source said.